I’m working on trying to improve my vector tracing skills. It’s come to my recent attention that I could be doing a lot better. My main problem is my lines. When I first learned how to do it, the tutorial I used was for Photoshop, and I learned to do all of the outlining with the Pen Tool. But this tends to leave all of the lines at a consistent, static thickness which in the end doesn’t look perfect. I read today that most good vector trace images are done in a program called Inkscape, which is actually a (gasp) vector image program (as opposed to raster). It’s also open source, which is cruise control for win. It lets me get even fancier with the contruction of the image outlines, so maybe (hopefully) my work will improve.

I find vectoring animu images to be pretty fun (despite extremely time consuming). It lets you take an otherwise fuzzy image (such as a screenshot of a show), blow it up nice and big, and make it really crisp and vibrant - which makes an excellent wallpaper. Vector images are also considered “infinitely scalable” meaning (if I understand completely) you can increase and decrease the dimensions of the image without losing quality.

Perhaps you might see something from me in the near future.

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